"A [preacher] who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they are necessarily reflected in his [preaching]." — BXVI

05 May 2009

Feminist outrage & the banality of abortion (UPDATED)

NB. I have edited this posted to eliminate my inflammatory language. A commenter correctly pointed out that my description of the author is less than charitable (not in those words but close enough). My apologies to the author. I'm not going to lie and say I didn't intend to offend. That's exactly what I intended to do, and by doing so, I distracted from the real issues. Having been a pro-abortion proponent for years, including a stint as a NOW escort at one of the south's largest abortion clinics, and having worked for a rape crisis center, a battered women's shelter, and a hospital for sexually abused children, I have seen the emotional and spiritual devastation that abortion causes women who have been encouraged to kill their children because not doing so would be taken as a sign that they have capitulated somehow to male dominance. My opposition to the radical feminist agenda is not simply a knee-jerk Catholic reaction to an ideology that rejects the Church. I was a radical feminist and Marxist for years. Up-close and personal, I've seen their agenda destroy lives. The obstinate refusal to recognize what abortion does to women is not only a political blindness, it is a willed evil as well. From the inside, I know that the "pro-choice" movement is anything but supportive of a woman's right to choose to have children. The pressure to abort unwanted preganancies is overwhelming. And the rhetoric of the pro-aborts is designed to de-humanize the child using medical terminology so that the woman is numbed to the reality of what she is choosing to do.In my experience, women who have been raped and choose to carry the child to term are characterized as "gender traitors" and seen by the feminist community as enablers of male dominance. They would rather see a child murdered than see their ideology challenged by a traitor who refuses to sacrifice her child for the good of the cause. A note on comments: I simply don't have time to respond to everyone's objections. But please continue commenting. . .just sign a name!

I've been asked in one of the com-boxes to comment on the following anti-Catholic polemic from a pro-abortionist:___________________________________

In Brazil, there is a horrific story of a 9-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated. It’s believed that the rape was committed by her step-father. The girl was not only pregnant at that young age, but also pregnant with twins. And so, as makes perfect sense, she had an abortion [Of course! It makes perfect sense to add double homicide to this horror]. Because she was raped, because she was much to young to have a child, and because the stress of having twins would of course have been far too much for a 9-year-old’s body to handle. And she could have died.

Now, the Catholic Church has excommunicated both the girl’s mother and the doctors who performed the abortion, which likely saved the girl’s life [and killed two other people in the process].

[NB. Notice that the author of piece never once acknowledges the humanity of the children much less their personhood. The children are simply disposal by-products of a violent rape. Also note that there is never a peep about the possible mental trauma a forced abortion might cause a pregnant nine-year old.]

Well then. At least they didn’t excommunicate the girl, right? Maybe they decided that she was much too young to have made the decision to have the abortion on her own, or to understand what was happening [and yet Planned Parenthood and other pro-aborts ruthlessly oppose any and all attempts to require parental notification for underage girls, and they illegally encourage the statutory rape of underage girls by telling them to lie about the father's age when the girls seek abortions]. But not too young, apparently, to be forced to give birth to the twins caused by her rapist. Not too young to quite possibly die in the process [and apparently not too young to be forced to get a double abortion].

In defending the decision, the Church’s lawyer has said:

“It’s the law of God: Do not kill. We consider this murder,” Miranda said in comments reported by O Globo.

But rape, apparently, is a-okay [yes, exactly. . .b/c the Church opposes murder, it must necessarily follow that the Church supports rape]. After all, I don’t see the step-father, who allegedly admitted to having raped the girl since the age of 6, being excommunicated [raping a child is beyond horrible, but does it rise to the level of killing her?]. Killing a fetus is apparently worthy of such censure and shunning. Horrifically violating a small child, though? Well, we all make mistakes [in so far as the father has committed rape he is in effect excommunicated. . .he may not "worthily receive" the sacraments until he has repented and received absolution]. And this stance is of course nothing new.

The lawyer also argued that the girl just should have carried to term and had a cesarean section. Because obviously a lawyer knows the girl’s condition better than her own doctor. And obviously the girl’s mental well-being doesn’t count for a damn thing [because avoiding even the possibility that the girl might suffer mentally from giving birth is worth the lives of two children. What about the damage a forced abortion will cause this girl?].

Who knows what a cesarean section would have done for the girl [precisely, who knows? On the other hand, we know exactly what abortion does to children], since the doctors didn’t present the issue of her giving vaginal birth as being the main health concern here. But oh well. God says. Clearly, if this child died in the course of fulfilling “God’s wishes,” it would have been a lesser tragedy than the cold-blooded murder of those innocent little fetuses [no, it would have compounded this tragedy even more. . .]. After all, in other extremist Catholic doctrine, a woman is better off dead than raped anyway [yup, got us again. . .this interpretation of Catholic doctrine seems to square quite well with paragraph 2356, of the Catechism, which reads: "Rape is the forcible violation of the sexual intimacy of another person. It does injury to justice and charity. Rape deeply wounds the respect, freedom, and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right. It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life. It is always an intrinsically evil act. Graver still is the rape of children committed by parents (incest) or those responsible for the education of the children entrusted to them."Did you catch that: like abortion, rape is always an "intrinsically evil act."

RH Reality Check asks: Is this what religious objection to abortion looks like [No. But this woman's post is what anti-Catholic bigotry looks like]? Seeing as how the point of the entire anti-choice movement is indeed to erase any and all concern for the woman in question, in fact to erase her very existence if at all possible [again, right on! And the fact that the Catholic Church is the single largest non-governmental donor of charitable funds to social service organizations in the world is entirely besides the point. . .also ignored in this piece is the fact that the Catholic Church in the U.S. provides free pre-natal care, free adoption services, and even free recovery services to any pregnant woman who wants them. . .let's see, I think Planned Parenthood charges $350 per abortion] . . . clearly, yes. In an extreme nutshell, this is exactly what it looks like.___________________________________

Folks, this is what the Church is up against. The sheer irrationality and venom of this post is incredible. The author sees no moral dilemma here, no horror in aborting the girl's children. She takes no stand against forcing a nine-year old, already traumatized by rape, to undergo an abortion. Abortion, after all, is the Feminist Sacrament. The real kicker is that she directs her outrage at the Church for announcing the excommunications of the mother and doctor. . .excommunications that happened long before the Church even knew the abortions had taken place. The Church did not excommunicate these people. They excommunicated themselves by committing a double-murder. And, AND! These excommunications are really quite simple to lift. Those babies are still dead. And always will be.

I don't know the all the circumstances of this case. I don't need to know the circumstances to call an abortion murder. If it became apparent later in the pregnancy that carrying and giving birth to the twins would kill the girl, then an extraordinarily difficult decision would have to be made. And even if the girl's mother and doctor opted to abort the children, we could never call it good. It would be an evil regardless of circumstance or intent. The only thing that we might say is that culpability for the murders would be somewhat mitigated by circumstances and intent. The object of abortion. . .the ONLY object of abortion. . .is the death of an innocent human person. When can we say that this is a Good Thing? Never.

NOTE: Sign a name to your comments or they will be deleted. HancAquam does not tolerate anonymous hit and run cowards in its com-box!

What critics seem to fundamentally not get is that the Church did not excommunicate anyone in this case. The doctors and mother - practicing Catholics - excommunicated themselves by participating in direct abortion. No Catholic could possibly think it was all right to participate in direct abortion. Any Catholic with an ounce of catechesis knows he or she excommunicates him/herself by doing so. Critics prefer to blame the Church instead of understanding that the mother and doctors are voluntarily practicing Catholics who voluntarily undertook an action that they knew would result in their excommunication. No one is forcing these people to be Catholic and no one excommunicated them. Furthermore, excommunication is an ecclesiastical penalty that is easily remedied; it doesn't mean they can never be Catholic again, but rather it means they have separated themselves from the Church.

Further, in all the reports I read on this story, the mother shopped around until she found a hospital willing to perform an abortion. The first hospital she went to saw no threat to the child's life. Although, according to Catholic teaching, direct (as opposed to indirect) abortion would never be permitted even to save a life, the claim that the abortion was necessary to save the girl's life was added to the story after the fact in order to make people more sympathetic to the mother and doctors. That detail is conveniently missing from critics' rendition of the story.

Father,I agree that this story is an outrage and was deeply troubled by it when I first read about it. As one who made this horrible choice at the age of 24- I know all too well the trauma it causes. Having gone through healing and and now giving my witness, I meet up with all kinds of people who have all kinds of reactions. This person's very anti-Catholic post also makes me wonder- did this story of the 9 yr old girl and abortion hit a nerve? I am not condoning the person's statements, I just remember my own defensiveness pre-healing.Just my 2 cents.

I've read the same thing as Erin. The first hospital said that the pregnancy would not harm the child, but vaginal birth would not be possible. A C-Section would need to be done. There was a very good chance that we could've had three live and healthy children as opposed to 1 live, wounded child and 2 dead ones.

The annoying thing is I'm related to women like this. Makes for an interesting Thanksgiving dinner though.

Seeing as how the point of the entire anti-choice movement is indeed to erase any and all concern for the woman in question...From what I've read of the case, this bald-faced lie is an offense against truth of remarkable propotions, the ignorance of the author notwithstanding.

So you're saying that priests with no medical training who have not examined the patient know her medical needs better than doctors with years of it who have?

(I'm also interested in your constant references to the abortion as "forced." Yet you don't afford the same treatment to the birth that would have occurred had the abortion not been performed. If the girl could not, in your view, consent to an abortion, what makes you think she could consent to give birth?)

No where in my comments do I pretend to offer medical advice nor do I make any sort of claim about the girl's medical needs. That's a red herring. My comments are directed at the morality of the abortion and the hypocrisy of the author in worrying excessively about what the pregnancy might do to the girl while completely ignoring the possible damage a double abortion could do. My lack of medical credentials is irrelevant to the application of Catholic moral teaching. Abortion is always and everywhere, under all conceivable circumstances and despite any good intention, always a moral evil. As I said in the post, there is room to mitigate culpability for the act given circumstance and intent, but the act itself can never be called good.

Rape is forced. Abortions can be forced. Births cannot be forced. IOW, the biological process initiated by sex (forced or not) is a matter of natural progression given the nature of the reproductive system. A woman could be forcible prevented from getting an abortion, but that is not the same as forcing her to give birth.

The rather simple point of my post is that the double abortion did not solve this girl's problem. The abortions did nothing to help her. We do not know if the pregnancy would have harmed her. We do not know if giving birth would have harmed her. We do know that the only object of abortion is the murder of a child.

I fully realize that there are no perfect moral solutions in this horror. But this girl's mother and her doctor chose the worst possible option short of murdering the girl and her twins. Of course, it doesn't help the situation that the girl's mother obtained the abortions in order to help protect her husband from a rape prosecution.

My lack of medical credentials is irrelevant to the application of Catholic moral teaching.Of course it's conveniently irrelevant, especially since the Catholic church is founded on misogyny. Who cares what the consequences of reproductive oppression are on women's health? Have 8 kids! Or 10! Or 15! It's God's will. Never mind what happens to your body and mind and emotions along the way. Your job is to be a vessel for other human beings!

Oh, wait: I forgot. The church advocates "birth control" by conveniently creating a rule that says, "You can prevent children by not having sex during the point in your cycle that sex is often the most pleasurable for women; i.e., during ovulation."

A woman could be forcible prevented from getting an abortion, but that is not the same as forcing her to give birth.So - since birth is a "natural progression" of sex ("forced or not, as you so eloquently put it), how is "forcibly preventing" a pregnancy not forcing a woman to give birth?

You say there is never a time, under any circumstances, when abortion can be condoned. Yet you cite example after example where wrongs against women can be perpetrated, without batting an eye. Rape, assault, life-threatening surgery, removal of personal sovreignty. Shorter church: fetuses and men matter.

You don't want to admit the hypocrisy and double standard of the church. But think on this: not one woman, not one, has, in 2,000 years, had any authority or input into an institution that seeks to control their lives.

That is the height of immorality. And it's why I left the church years ago. I was born into a family that forced me to live under a system in which I had no input or choice, a system which is inherently abusive and harmful to women, and told that if I didn't embrace the system I'd go to hell.

Pretty neat game you've got going there. But as a man, you don't have to worry about it, do you? It's easy to sit at the top of the patriarchy and talk about how your oppressed members really don't have it so bad.

Of course it's conveniently irrelevant, especially since the Catholic church is founded on misogyny. Who cares what the consequences of reproductive oppression are on women's health? Have 8 kids! Or 10! Or 15! It's God's will. Never mind what happens to your body and mind and emotions along the way. Your job is to be a vessel for other human beings!I'm going to make a good faith assumption that your ignorance of Catholic teaching displayed here is not willful, but rather second hand. There is no teaching that requires woman to have as many children as they can without regard to health issues. In fact, such things can dispense with the normative duty of married couples to have children.

Oh, wait: I forgot. The church advocates "birth control" by conveniently creating a rule that says, "You can prevent children by not having sex during the point in your cycle that sex is often the most pleasurable for women; i.e., during ovulation."Again, I don't know where that quote comes from, but this is an embarassing second-hand caricature of Church teaching. As someone married to a woman who practices and advocates Natural Family Planning after years of immoral contraception, I can personally attest that our marriage and love has grown stronger once we chucked the contraceptives.

A woman could be forcible prevented from getting an abortion, but that is not the same as forcing her to give birth.So - since birth is a "natural progression" of sex ("forced or not, as you so eloquently put it), how is "forcibly preventing" a pregnancy not forcing a woman to give birth?This is a species of "my body, my choice". The problem is that when one appeals to the body as one's property, they run into the fact that property rights are not absolute. If a toddler wandered onto your property or even into your house, you don't have the right to shoot her as a trespasser. Ownership does not mean, and has never meant, "I am the demigod of this patch of dirt and whatever I say is law within these fences!" It doesn't mean that about your house, it doesn't mean that abour your body.

You say there is never a time, under any circumstances, when abortion can be condoned. Yet you cite example after example where wrongs against women can be perpetrated, without batting an eye. Rape, assault, life-threatening surgery, removal of personal sovreignty. Shorter church: fetuses and men matter.I'm afraid you have a reading comprehension problem here. Father Philip already cited where rape and assualt are objectively wrong in Church teaching. As far as "life-threatening surgery", that isn't true. A c-section can be refused. What can't happen is directly killing the innocent humans inside the womb, I've addressed the "personal sovereignity" issue above.

You don't want to admit the hypocrisy and double standard of the church. But think on this: not one woman, not one, has, in 2,000 years, had any authority or input into an institution that seeks to control their lives.Right and Wrong are not determined by the gender of the person proposing it. Not deliberately killing the innocent is a universal rule.

That is the height of immorality. And it's why I left the church years ago. I was born into a family that forced me to live under a system in which I had no input or choice, a system which is inherently abusive and harmful to women, and told that if I didn't embrace the system I'd go to hell.I won't propose to get mixed in what your family did or didn't do to you, but the fact is no one is forced to be Catholic. If I don't go to Mass, Swiss Guards do not show up to my door and arrest me. If I kill someone, police DO show up and arrest me as they should.

Pretty neat game you've got going there. But as a man, you don't have to worry about it, do you? It's easy to sit at the top of the patriarchy and talk about how your oppressed members really don't have it so bad.Again, deliberately killing the innocent is wrong no matter who proposes it. I notice nowhere in this response that you address the humanity of the unborn. Also, note that in the world-scheme, the targets of abortion are generally female. Sounds oppressive to me.

@Tinfoil Hattie:That is the height of immorality. And it's why I left the church years ago. I was born into a family that forced me to live under a system in which I had no input or choice, a system which is inherently abusive and harmful to women, and told that if I didn't embrace the system I'd go to hell.You had no input or choice, but by some strange series of events and decisions, you departed. How did they not track you down and force you to return? Come on! Be honest and admit that the Church asks her members to love one another with an unselfish love, to love your enemies as yourself, including the enemy that might be within your own womb. Isn't that a sad statement to make! Our babies are the enemy! This is such a ridiculous topic. No less than half of all aborted fetuses are female. Now that is misogyny of the highest degree! But don't let science interfere with your intransigent ideas and opinions. It is all about you! Statements like this prove the point that all doors leading out of the Church begin below the belt. Sex without consequences is the mantra of this sad age.

This case from Brazil is rare and sad to say the least, but rare and difficult cases make for bad law. The killing of these babies helps no one in the long run, except for the most anti-life crazies this world has ever seen.

If the issue of abortion is the reason you left the Church, you completely missed the point of the message and mission of Jesus Christ.

The commenter above, Brother Andrew McAlpin, O.P., is gpoing to be ordained to the priesthood in a few days. From the tenor of his comments found here and elsewhere, it's clear that we have one more young, good and holy priest on the way. Deo Gratias! Is he a member of the western or the eastern Dominican province?

No where in my comments do I pretend to offer medical advice nor do I make any sort of claim about the girl's medical needsEr...We do not know if the pregnancy would have harmed her. We do not know if giving birth would have harmed her.The doctors didn't advise her to have an abortion just because they are Evil Baby-Killing Fiends. They're professionals with their patient's interests in mind, like any other doctors. And they are, I'll reiterate, doctors with years of experience, who had the opportunity to examine the patient. I'd trust them if they said that giving birth could kill her. And then where would we be? Then, even if you believe the twins are persons, you wind up with three deaths instead of two. True, in that case no "murder" would have occurred, but personally, my conscience would rest easier knowing that one life at least had been spared. I do have to wonder sometimes what values people have who would rather let a little girl die than "murder" two embryos who would die anyway.

Rape is forced. Abortions can be forced. Births cannot be forced. IOW, the biological process initiated by sex (forced or not) is a matter of natural progression given the nature of the reproductive system. A woman could be forcible prevented from getting an abortion, but that is not the same as forcing her to give birth.Not true. If someone locked you up with no food until you starved, would you say that they were blameless because starvation is the natural result of not having any food? You're being forcibly prevented from nourishing yourself, but by your logic, that's not the same as killing you.

The rather simple point of my post is that the double abortion did not solve this girl's problem. The abortions did nothing to help her.That's a big assumption for a middle-aged (?) man to make about a nine-year-old girl who's been spared from having to bear her father's children.

Of course, it doesn't help the situation that the girl's mother obtained the abortions in order to help protect her husband from a rape prosecution.And he should absolutely be prosecuted. That is, to borrow your phrase, a red herring.

Isn't that a sad statement to make! Our babies are the enemy!I'm always fascinated by anti-abortion people who think that pro-choice people hate embryos or want to punish them, or that we're somehow united in an army against the embryo army. No. Abortion is a personal decision which is very hard for some people, but it's a decision about something taking place within their own bodies.

No less than half of all aborted fetuses are female. Now that is misogyny of the highest degree!Er, this doesn't actually make any sense. About half of born children are female, too. Reproduction just works that way. Also see my response to Scott below.

There is no teaching that requires woman to have as many children as they can without regard to health issues.However, since the Church rejects birth control, a couple having normal sexual relations within marriage will produce a lot of children.

This is a species of "my body, my choice". The problem is that when one appeals to the body as one's property, they run into the fact that property rights are not absolute. If a toddler wandered onto your property or even into your house, you don't have the right to shoot her as a trespasser. Ownership does not mean, and has never meant, "I am the demigod of this patch of dirt and whatever I say is law within these fences!" It doesn't mean that about your house, it doesn't mean that abour your body.However, you are absolutely within your rights to remove the toddler from your property (pick her up and move her?) if she does not leave when you ask. Likewise, the embryo has no right to be inside anyone's body, using their resources - you have the right to remove that embryo. It so happens that in this case removing the embryo will kill it, but it's depriving it of resources to which it has no right in the first place. And then again, there's the hypothetical where the trespasser is not an adorable toddler, but a grown man with a sawn-off rifle.

Also, note that in the world-scheme, the targets of abortion are generally female. Sounds oppressive to me.Does not make abortion the problem. The way to end sex-selective abortion is to make sure that girl children are valued as much as boy children - end the tradition of dowries that bankrupt families of girls, make all jobs open to women, that sort of thing. Not to further limit women's rights.

You seem to be an expert on irrational and venomous posts. You called Cara "a twisted lover of child-murder" and said "This woman's post is a sure sign that we are reading something written by someone deeply, deeply influenced by Hell." as but two examples. (Influenced by Hell? I doubt she's ever met the person.)

Perhaps she "never once acknowledges the humanity of the children much less their personhood" because these issues are irrelevant to the case. Whether or not we declare a fetus to be a person, no one should have the right to attach to another person for the purpose of life support against that person's will.

The mental gymnastics in your comments are impressive. In particular your claim that births cannot be forced is baseless. If society denies a pregnant woman access to abortion, the woman will either give birth or die. This, in effect, is forced birth.

The Vatican spokesmen were giving medical advice when they suggested that a c-section could be performed on the girl (literally cutting her open) after the fetuses were further along in gestation.

Oh and Scott, like Tinfoil Hattie I was raised Roman Catholic. I was forced by my parents to attend mass against my will. If you have a statement from the Church stating that parents are not to force their minor children to attend mass, please let me know.

In my case I gave up religion completely because I eventually came to realize that the tenets of Christianity and theism in general were incompatible with reason.

for my 3 cents worth:1) pregnancy isn't harmful to the mother2) having 10+ kids isn't harmful to the mother, matter of fact it used to be NORMAL3) apples are different from caterpillars and comparing the two is really annoying.4) keep sirring Fr Philip, keep stirring!

I was thinking more about this case this morning. I think a parallel can be made between the case of a nine year old girl and her unborn child (or children in this case) and the case of conjoined twins.

As I understand it, sometimes conjoined twins need to stay conjoined in order to live because they share important organs.

And sometimes separating them surgically is easy and involves no significant damage to either one.

But sometimes as they grow, their growth interferes with each other's to the extent that they need to be separated or they will both die.

Usually one twin is at much greater risk in the operation. Sometimes he has a better chance than at other times. Sometimes he has no real chance at all.

So she might have been able to carry to term. She might have needed to have an early emergency C-section with all the uncertainty that involves. But if the situation threatened her life before the babies were viable (and thus the babies' lives too) would it have been wrong to separate them surgically from their mother?

(I'm not thinking of a surgical abortion here, which is a gruesome and violent way to die, but perhaps a very early C-section, or something comparable, so that the babies might even have lived briefly after the separation and had a chance to be baptized.)

In other words, you think the morally superior alternative would have been to murder the nine year old child by forcing her to continue a pregnancy her doctors (you know, those highly trained professionals who evaluated the girl and were actually in a position to make an informed medical judgment?) believed would kill her.

I'm sorry, but you are placing ideology and dogma above any concern for this little girl. Your ideology is an evil, distorted version of 'morality'. There is nothing 'pro-life' about it. An ideology that values foetuses above and beyond all else is morally bankrupt and anti-human.

Emma, there is nothing morally superior about murder. The fact that pro-abortionists refuse to acknowledge is that two children WERE murdered. Not "might have been," not "would have," but they actually died. We do not know what would have, could, might have happened to the girl.

My moral stand is to save as many lives as possible...ideally, all three of the children involved. Your ideology lets you believe that the first and only solution to this problem is to kill two babies. Don't think for a second that you aren't pushing a morally superior attitude...appealing to medical professionals in order to turn murder into a "treatment" is the height of hypocrisy.

I notice that you dodge the issue of what an abortion will do medically to a nine year old. And you dodge what an abortion will do mentally and spiritually to a nine year. You also dodge the issue of the fact that the girl's mother forced her daughter to get the abortions in order to cover for the rapist, her husband. Apparently, they're learning from Planned Parenthood down in Brazil.

Rebbecca: You should know by now that the mother of that poor 9 year old traveled to various hospitals until she found one that would perform an abortion on her daughter to cover for the father. It was not some high professional opinion, it was fraudulent because other hospitals told her to just have the damn C-Section. SO im calling Bull on that one.

Secondly, your example about starvation is ridiculous and quite offensive. Pregnancy is the natural biological process that not just humans utilize but all animals do to survive. Starvation is not. So once again, im calling BS

Thirdly, you say that you do not treat unborn children (which you will never call them for you deny them the dignity of even that) as the enemy and yet in your own answer to scott, you compare an unborn child to a man (not a woman btw) with a sawn off rifle. how is that not the enemy for you? Just admit it to yourself. and save yourself and us from all your denials.

Finally, on that very example, if a toddler came onto your property, even if it wasn't yours (since we are talking about rape here) The proper response would not be to put them onto the street or into the woods away from your property but to call the police or Child services and wait until they came to pick up the child. That would be the responsible action and so would waiting for the children to be born to ive them up for adoption.

So please, if are going to come over from Feministe to yell at the Catholics, at least think before you type.

However, since the Church rejects birth control, a couple having normal sexual relations within marriage will produce a lot of children.NO! The Church does NOT reject birth control. It rejects contraception. The difference is important. Couples can regulate the number of children they have through natural means for serious reasons.

However, you are absolutely within your rights to remove the toddler from your property (pick her up and move her?) if she does not leave when you ask.Sure. The closest paralell would be adoption. The child has the right because she is INNOCENT, and you cannot deliberately kill the innocent no matter the circumstances. Saying, "Well, we are just removing the fetus and it dies because of that" is a magical word game like saying, "I didn't commit vehicular manslaughter. I merely moved my foot from the brake to the gas pedal which is my right to do so, and it just so happens that a old lady was in my way at the time."

Does not make abortion the problem. The way to end sex-selective abortion is to make sure that girl children are valued as much as boy children - end the tradition of dowries that bankrupt families of girls, make all jobs open to women, that sort of thing. Not to further limit women's rights.More magical word games similar to the "we need to reduce the need for abortions" kinda like saying, "we should reduce the need for lynching black people, but lynching black people should be every person's choice." There is no such thing as a right to deliberately kill the innocent.

Oh and Scott, like Tinfoil Hattie I was raised Roman Catholic. I was forced by my parents to attend mass against my will. If you have a statement from the Church stating that parents are not to force their minor children to attend mass, please let me know.Assuming you are serious, of course parents force their children to go to Mass. They also force them to brush their teeth, eat their vegetables, go to bed at a reasonable hour, etc. O the oppression! Seriously, as the children get older and able to articulate their objections, parents ought to take those objections seriously. No one should be taking Sacraments if they do not believe in the teachings of the Church. If the parent's dont't, it's their fault, not the Church's. My point stands.

At this point I have to do some bookkeeping. For many years discussing Catholicism on forums, conversations, etc. I've heard many people preface their comments with something like "I used to be Catholic..." in that entire time I have never heard anyone saying this correctly articulate a single Catholic teaching. Not once. Not even accidently. After the posts here, my record remains unbroken.

2) having 10+ kids isn't harmful to the mother, matter of fact it used to be NORMALKnow what else used to be normal? 1 in 8 women dying in childbirth. (cite)

Fr. Powell:

I notice that you dodge the issue of what an abortion will do medically to a nine year old.Better than what a pregnancy would have done medically to a nine-year-old.

And you dodge what an abortion will do mentally and spiritually to a nine year.Everyone reacts differently to their abortion. Some people are sad; some are just relieved. We don't know how this girl will react, and it's disingenuous to assume that she'll be damaged forever. Never mind that bearing her father's children at the age of nine is likely to have rendered her permanently depressed or even suicidal.

James:

your example about starvation is ridiculous and quite offensive. Pregnancy is the natural biological process that not just humans utilize but all animals do to survive. Starvation is not.You're saying this as if the human race is going to die out because of abortion. Are children really so terrible that you don't think anyone would have them without being compelled by laws or religion?

What's more, you haven't discredited my analogy at all. Birth is the natural result of pregnancy if abortion is prevented. Death is the natural result of starvation if nourishment is prevented. Please explain how this is ridiculous or offensive.

you say that you do not treat unborn children (which you will never call them for you deny them the dignity of even that)"Unborn child" is a very loaded term; in the interest of opening the dialogue both to people who believe in such and to people who don't, I prefer to use a term everyone can agree on, like "embryo."

yet in your own answer to scott, you compare an unborn child to a man (not a woman btw) with a sawn off rifle. how is that not the enemy for you? Just admit it to yourself. and save yourself and us from all your denials.Make the analogy person a woman with a sawn-off shotgun, then. It doesn't really matter. In any case, the "enemy" concept is not what's important here. I have a friend who will die if she gets pregnant. Absolutely, 100% die - she tried to have a baby before and it came very, very close to killing her months before it was even viable. Whatever you call it - and I think "enemy" is very foolish terminology here - the comparison of an embryo to a person with a deadly weapon is not an idle one.

if a toddler came onto your property, even if it wasn't yours (since we are talking about rape here) The proper response would not be to put them onto the street or into the woods away from your property but to call the police or Child services and wait until they came to pick up the child."Pick up the toddler and move her" was facetious; naturally, one would call CPS or look for the child's parents. Your point?

Scott:

The Church does NOT reject birth control. It rejects contraception. The difference is important. Couples can regulate the number of children they have through natural means for serious reasons.You're right, I misspoke. However, NFP (or whichever term you prefer) is not as effective as contraception, so of course more children will be born to couples using it.

The child has the right because she is INNOCENT, and you cannot deliberately kill the innocent no matter the circumstances.This focus on innocence bothers me. The Church rejects the death penalty, too. (For the most part.) In any case, that's not true - being innocent doesn't confer upon anyone a special right to someone else's property or bodily resources.

Saying, "Well, we are just removing the fetus and it dies because of that" is a magical word game like saying, "I didn't commit vehicular manslaughter. I merely moved my foot from the brake to the gas pedal which is my right to do so, and it just so happens that a old lady was in my way at the time."Driving rights are not absolute. You do not have the right to step on the gas when there is a red light, or before stopping at a stop sign - or when a person or property is in front of you. But the right to bodily autonomy is the foundation of every other law.

More magical word games similar to the "we need to reduce the need for abortions" kinda like saying, "we should reduce the need for lynching black people, but lynching black people should be every person's choice."Is the black person in your analogy living inside someone else's body? No? I didn't think so.

For many years discussing Catholicism on forums, conversations, etc. I've heard many people preface their comments with something like "I used to be Catholic..." in that entire time I have never heard anyone saying this correctly articulate a single Catholic teaching. Not once. Not even accidently. After the posts here, my record remains unbroken.How about I break your record for you: Sex is sin. Abstinence is ideal, otherwise procreative sex is acceptable, but only within a Church-sanctioned marriage. No contraception. No masturbation. No oral sex. No anal sex. Even within marriage.

1. "Sex is sin." The Church does not teach this. From the Catechism: "Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others"(2332).

2. "Abstinence is ideal..." No, charity expressed in chastity is ideal. Again, the Catechism: "Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's fidelity and loving kindness"(2346).

3. "...procreative sex is acceptable, but only within a Church-sanctioned marriage." True as far as it goes, but misses the point entirely. Sex within marriage is for both pro-creation and the unitative bond of the couple. Accusing the Church of focusing only on the procreative is a typically ignorant move.

4. "No contraception. No masturbation." Again, true in as far as a pithy bumper-sticker can be true. But miserably failing to go much beyond fortune cookie wisdom. Trying to understand Catholic sexual ethics using graffiti is like trying to understand the origins of life using child's chemistry set from Wal-Mart.

5. No oral/anal sex even within marriage. Oh, the horror.

"This teaching is morally bankrupt." And so is your farcical--and no doubt self-serving--mischaracterization of 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

You are 100% confident that the pregnancy will harm the girl...And yet you assert that everyone reacts differently to an abortion.You're conflating physical and mental harm. Is this deliberate?

It's possible that the girl would not have suffered mentally from the pregnancy. I'm no doctor, but I'm certain, however, that she would have suffered physically. Girls older than she, with better hospital conditions, die in childbirth not infrequently.

'm willing to distinguish physical and mental harm and assert that both pregnancy and abortion can cause both types of harm.As long as we agree on the "can." :)

Abortion is known to cause sterility in many cases and increase the chances of breast cancer: http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/medicalgroups/index.htmDo you have a reputable source for this information?

Current KnowledgeIn February 2003, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) convened a workshop of over 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk. Workshop participants reviewed existing population-based, clinical, and animal studies on the relationship between pregnancy and breast cancer risk, including studies of induced and spontaneous abortions. They concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. A summary of their findings, titled Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop, can be found at http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/ere-workshop-report .

I disagree that I am missing the point of Church teaching regarding sex. If "unitative bond" were really a goal, there would be no proscription on oral sex within marriage. If the Church recognized the human need for sexual release then it would acknowledge that most women do not achieve orgasm through sexual intercourse alone, and would accommodate women's needs. Ditto allowing prophylactic use in case one partner is HIV-positive, allowing divorce in case a couple is found to carry recessive genes that would likely lead to diseased offspring, etc.

I have no need for a complete understanding of the tortured, disingenuous rationalizations of Church anti-sex teachings. These teachings are of no consequence to me, except 1) to the degree that I have not completely recovered from my Catholic upbringing in the 27 years since I rejected it, 2) to the degree that I worry about the well-being of my nieces and nephews, who risk inheriting the sexual neuroses of myself and my siblings, and 3) to the degree that the Church attempts to impose its teaching on society through the force of law.

From a dissenting invited participant at the NCI conference: "Contrary to stated intention to exclude experts believed to have preconceived conclusions or strongly held ideas about abortion, invited experts included many with known pro-abortion extremist positions. For example, Lynn Rosenberg and Julie Palmer have both served as paid expert witnesses for abortion providers in court challenges to parental notification (LR; Florida, 1999) and parental consent (JP, Alaska, 2002) laws."

The rest of Dr. Brind's objections and the conclusions of his research can be found at: http://www.bcpinstitute.org/factshts.htm

Now, I am NOT claiming that Brind is correct. I'm not an medical doctor. However, the idea that the NCI is a neutral observer is this review of the literature is false. The question for women considering abortion is: who's facts do you trust? The abortion industry that profits from your choice to abort, or a group of medical doctors who have nothing to gain from you keeping your baby?

Fr. Philip covered me well. Thanks! The record remains unbroken. Arium made a valiant effort, but because of anti-Catholic's pathological inability to avoid gross caricature, swing and a miss!

"Innocence" may not confer right's to other people's property. But most emphatically limits what acceptable acts one can do to them. Again, you don't get to deliberately kill the innocent. Whether they are in your house or in your body, because they also have bodily integrity. This demonstrates the sheer arbitrariness of location in the tragi-comic world of abortion defense. "Oh but the child doesn't have the right to my resources!" as if when the child is born we tell it, "Ok, here is the want ads. Go find a job and start paying rent." and then walk away assuming the baby can find the frige full of food on its own.

Is the black person in your analogy living inside someone else's body? No? I didn't think so.Lynching a black person is intrinsicly wrong. Deliberately killing a child in the womb is deliberatley wrong. A bad argument for the latter will usually be a bad argument for the former. In this case it is and thus, the analogy is apt? The simple solution to not having one's bad arguments go down in flames is to stop defending the indefensible.

Dear Arium, Have you ever felt the Love of God and been physically aware of His presence? Have you ever really talked to God/prayed and told Him about how you feel about Him and His Church? Reading between the lines of your comments there is a great deal of pain and hurt. Your parents took you to church because they loved you and wanted the best for you i.e. a joyful rlationship with God and ultimately your salvation. Bitterness and a lack of forgiveness only damages the person who harbors it, it has no effect on the person(s)you are angry with. Abortion is part of the culture of death and together with its perfidious twin euthanasia is in direct contravention to Almighty God and His Church and the Gospel.Even if you leave out the 'theist' stuff, there in nothing remotely positive about it. If it were just about the womans body I would buy that she should have control, but there is another human being involved and the mother to be does not have the right to take away that life. We use the term unborn child because that is what it is ... a child. Using clinical terminology is a means to remove oneself from the reality of what is to happen during abortion, which is the killing of a real human being.I will pray for you that you receive a) the gift of faith b) healing of the relationship between you and your parents (whether they are alive or dead)c)healing removal of your bitterness and pain. You have carried this pain for many years... the guilt over an abortion is something that women who undergo it often carry especially if they become unable to carry a baby subsequently. They feel unclean, unforgiven, in the wilderness, and many also suffer long term depression/mental illness as a result. I am a nurse/midwife who works in Ob/Gyn so I have read the research and meet the women daily in my care who suffer this. Do not offer abortion as solution...if you are a true feminist you surely would not wish this pain, guilt, depression for any of womankind or indeed the fathers of these lost children.

The site I linked has numerous links to medical studies. Just google the terms.I Googled all the organizations on the page. All of the ones supporting a causal link have a stated anti-abortion ideology. And when the AMA, ACOG, RCOG, NCI, and ACS disagree, I'm more inclined to believe them than an obscure and/or ideologically oriented group.

The question for women considering abortion is: who's facts do you trust? The abortion industry that profits from your choice to abort, or a group of medical doctors who have nothing to gain from you keeping your baby?I think you're underestimating the effect of ideology and overestimating the effect of money. Just because an anti-abortion person doesn't make any money from a woman not having an abortion doesn't mean that they don't feel good about themselves. Jill Stanek wrote on her blog a few months back about a call center employee who, when a customer called to get information about an abortion clinic, was proud to misdirect her because lying was not as great a sin as abortion.

The idea that abortion is a profitable industry has been disproved over and over and over. It's basically the only medical procedure whose cost hasn't skyrocketed in the last fifty years. To take a recent example from the news, Viagra was recently found not to cause vision problems. Do you suspect those doctors, too, of falsifying results so that they will have more patients to treat?

Scott:

"Innocence" may not confer right's to other people's property. But most emphatically limits what acceptable acts one can do to them. Again, you don't get to deliberately kill the innocent. Whether they are in your house or in your body, because they also have bodily integrity.As I said above, the Church also, for the most part, rejects the death penalty, which would seem to weaken the whole "acceptable acts to do to innocent people" argument.

This demonstrates the sheer arbitrariness of location in the tragi-comic world of abortion defense. "Oh but the child doesn't have the right to my resources!" as if when the child is born we tell it, "Ok, here is the want ads. Go find a job and start paying rent." and then walk away assuming the baby can find the frige full of food on its own.Do you not see a difference between one's body and one's property? We use the house as an analogy, but do you really not see someone's body as more sacred than a square of ground or a bank account? Parents have an obligation to a child after it is born because at that point its right to life outweighs their right to specific properties. When it is inside someone else's body, her right to liberty outweighs its right to life.

Lynching a black person is intrinsicly wrong. Deliberately killing a child in the womb is deliberatley wrong. A bad argument for the latter will usually be a bad argument for the former. In this case it is and thus, the analogy is apt?If you don't actually understand the concept of bodily autonomy, please tell me, so I can explain it to you before wasting more time on fruitless lines of reasoning.

Have you ever felt the Love of God and been physically aware of His presence? Have you ever really talked to God/prayed and told Him about how you feel about Him and His Church?Its time to play Save The Heathen!

I was taught to imagine the existence of several beings, including God and Santa Claus. I outgrew the belief in these imaginary beings long ago.

I was taught to pray. I never heard a response. If I had, I understand there are medications available today to help with that.

I have concluded by use of my ability to reason that no supernatural forces exist. It would be silly for me to pray today as I have nothing to which to direct prayers.

You diagnosis of bitterness and pain based on my few comments here is amusing. Surely you've heard the expression "recovering Catholic" before. I don't use that expression myself because I assume it to refer to people who have converted to kinder, gentler flavors of Christianity, but the symptoms are similar, like a low grade version of PTSD. I still have minor trouble related to Church-inflicted sexual neuroses, and face-to-face challenges of authority figures are still stressful, but in general I'm OK.

I am male. Abortion does not affect me directly. It just so happens I believe women's rights are human rights.

Not all women feel guilt over abortion. For examples I suggest the website I'm not sorryIn the past I've told people that since there is no god, prayer is a waste of time so they should not pray for me. I've reconsidered. If not praying would only free up time for you to proselytize, then we are better off if you pray. Knock yourself out.

Game over. No salvation today. Pick up a consolation prize on your way out.

Some Catholic teachings (aside from what Arium said, from zir own perspective):

Sex is procreative and unitive in purpose. It is for a woman assigned to the female sex at birth and a man assigned to the male sex at birth to engage in together within a Catholic marriage.

Abortion is a grave moral wrong in all cases, but to save the life of the mother, a procedure may be performed that might result in the death of the fetus, as with etopic pregnancies, and this is not morally wrong.

People are saved not only through faith, but also through acts.

There are many others, but I would filter them through my own perspective and one of you would tell me I was wrong or misrepresenting them.

Reading your description of what you think Catholicism is all about, all I can say is: you've left a Church you know nothing about. What you have described in this combox as "catholicism" sounds more like a SNL parody written by a bunch of bitter ex-nuns. I have absolutely no problem with people rejecting the Catholic faith, leaving the Church, etc. Yes, I would prefer that Catholics hang around and do the hard work of figuring out 2,000 years of wisdom, but if someone really understands what the Church teaches and why and they still reject it, well, so be it. What riles me are people who have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to the Church and then claim to be an ex-Catholic and use that authority to bash the Church. It's like me claiming to be an ex-member of the Democratic Party and attributing my departure to the party's strict opposition to voting rights for women and then going on FOXNews and crowing about being an ex-Democrat and how sexist all Democrats are.

I'm sorry you weren't given the Catholic faith. But don't claim that the parody of the faith you've described here is the real faith of the Church. It isn't. I know that you are deeply invested in your "atheism" now and pretending that the parody of the faith you reject is the real thing is all part of that investment. But if you are the legit thinker you claim to be, you will do the honest thing and find out the truth about faith--the real deal, not the SNL skit you chuckle at. Or, you could imitate the religious fundamentalists you claim to reject and cling to an illusion.

Reading your description of what you think Catholicism is all about, all I can say is: you've left a Church you know nothing about.You're saying that after 12 years of weekly church attendance, receipt of, to my recollection, 4 sacraments, nearly 7 years of Catholic schooling, and CCD classes (I don't remember what that stands for), I know nothing about Roman Catholicism. I wonder what is needed to obtain a requisite amount of knowledge of the RCC, studying at seminary?

I find the concept of "a SNL parody written by a bunch of bitter ex-nuns" to be amusing. While ex-nuns would certainly have more to be bitter about than I, surely such a parody would be based upon knowledge greater than mine. (I assume you are speaking hypothetically, but if such a skit exists, I'd like to see it.)

I assume that for the true believer, the primary point of RC is influencing one's destiny in the supposed afterlife. That does not negate the fact that for many survivors of RC, it is the perverse teachings in the realm of human sexuality that are the source of most of our trauma. Teachings that were written ages ago by men who must have had severe issues with sexuality themselves.

It really doesn't matter why RC condemns premarital sex, solitary sex, homosexuality, women in the priesthood, etc. What matters is that these rationalizations preclude consideration of the real harms caused by these teachings.

I can teach anyone to reel off "thou-shalt-not" bumper stickers and then turn around and teach them to shout themselves stupid condemning these same bumper stickers. Doesn't mean that the one shouting knows 1) the meaning of what's being shouted or 2) why what he is shouting may or may not be true.

You can reel off the bumper stickers, but can you tell us why the Church teaches what it does?

As an example of what I mean by "parody," the Church does not condemn homosexuality.

I take it since your focus in this thread has been exclusively on the Evil Church's prudish eye turned toward sex...I take it that one of the activities the Church allegedly condemns is one of your favorite sins? I have yet to meet an ex-Catholic who can articulate the faith. And I have yet to meet an ex-Catholic or current dissident is not pissed at the Church b/c the Church refuses to call his fav sin a Good Thing.

As I said above, the Church also, for the most part, rejects the death penalty, which would seem to weaken the whole "acceptable acts to do to innocent people" argument.No it doesn't weaken it at all. The Church does not teach the death penalty is an intrinsic evil like abortion is.

Do you not see a difference between one's body and one's property? We use the house as an analogy, but do you really not see someone's body as more sacred than a square of ground or a bank account? Parents have an obligation to a child after it is born because at that point its right to life outweighs their right to specific properties. When it is inside someone else's body, her right to liberty outweighs its right to life.Not at all. The idea that it's outside the womb means no killing, but inside the womb anything goes is completely arbitrary. Again it's the act--One is deliberately killing an innocent person and that is always, everywhere, and in every circumstance wrong.

If you don't actually understand the concept of bodily autonomy, please tell me, so I can explain it to you before wasting more time on fruitless lines of reasoning. Answered above. Bodily integrity is not absolute. If it involves deliberately killing another's body, in this case the child's body in the womb, it's evil.

Yay, Andie did it! Of course this doesn't change much in the sense that when someone says, "I was born and raised Catholic..." that one can take it as nature's way of warning you that what will come next will be a raving farago of nonsense. :D

I take it since your focus in this thread has been exclusively on the Evil Church's prudish eye turned toward sex...I take it that one of the activities the Church allegedly condemns is one of your favorite sins? I have yet to meet an ex-Catholic who can articulate the faith. And I have yet to meet an ex-Catholic or current dissident is not pissed at the Church b/c the Church refuses to call his fav sin a Good Thing.Which reminds me of PETA. :) No, seriously. Various vegans etc. believe eating meat or even using animal products is evil. I have never felt the urge to go to any of their sites and try to shout them down because their beliefs don't tweak my conscience in the slightest. In my net travels, there were two subjects that were sure to summon every viper from every rock to spit venom at. One as you can imagine was chastity. Dawn Eden can tell you all about that which brings me to the other subject that people are eager to gainsay: forgiveness. The common shot at Dawn was "Sure, you have already had your sexual fun. Who are you to talk about chastity?" In other words, abandon hope all ye who enter here.

A good read is Belloc's The Great Heresies. In it he described the last great one, "The Modern Phase" which would be deadliest of all because they would be attacks on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness themselves. Chastity is beautiful, forgiveness is good, that we are made in the image of God who created us to be more than a misreable pile of lusts is true. When we see they who doth protest too much, we no we are on the right track. It's like one can navigate with a compass using the butt-end instead of the north-pointing end. I have joked with friends that I have always wanted to publish a book called, "Negative witnesses to Truth" and in it would be things like satanists stealing the Eucharist. Well, that only proves that there is something there to steal.

I appreciate the analogy to the extremist organization PETA, but some tweaking is in order. We need a personal tie-in. How about this: You arrived home from school one day to find that the family dog had been removed from the backyard. On the front door was a note. The note states that the dog had been taken by a PETA member, and includes the quote, "Animals are not ours to keep as pets." Now you would have a relationship with PETA that is more analogous to my relationship with the RCC.

Although closer, this analogy is still lacking in that it doesn't address spending a lifetime trying to clean Catholic baggage from my conscience. (Naturally atheists don't believe that the conscience is a magic moral compass programmed with some objective version of morality.)

I have never felt the urge to go to any of their sites and try to shout them down ...I didn't come here due to the urge to shout someone down regarding their beliefs. I followed a link to a rant about a month-old post on a feminist website. I wrote a "me too" post when someone mentioned being an ex-Catholic. Next thing I knew I was discussing topics I hadn't thought about in years.

It would be difficult for me to shout anyone down here, as an adversary has his finger on the moderation button.

Chastity is beautiful, forgiveness is good, that we are made in the image of God who created us to be more than a misreable pile of lusts is true.This loathing of human nature goes a long way toward articulating a major defect of RC. If we assume for the sake of argument that RC is true, God created us with these "lusts," then declared acting on said lusts to be sinful. Such a god would not be worthy of respect. Calling sexual and other urges "a miserable pile of lusts" indicates an unhealthy view of sexuality and humanity.

When we see they who doth protest too much, we no we are on the right track.The suppression natural sexual urges is unhealthy. Countering declarations to the contrary benefits the general mental health of society.

I grieve for unborn children who, through accident of circumstance, find themselves in a non-Catholic hospital in need of life-saving health care services...but instead discover that the very people who are trained to save their lives are all too eager to take their lives for no other reason than that it is legal to do so and convenient.

Tinfoil Hattie,I didn't even read the rest of the comments (no time).I'm just busy laughing and kind of crying at your shortsighted ignorance.I'm an educated, 20th century woman, who was brought up under all the indoctrination of the femimist movement.All I can tell you is... the Catholic Church is MY BEST ADVOCATE.Being married to a Catholic man who does not insist, selfishly, that I drug myself up 24/7 to be available sexually, has MADE ME FREE!I'll never give guys like you the time of day, and I spend my time teaching my girls to avoid men who think like you like the plague.

I've just run out of time, patience, and false charity. Your world-view is a male-chauvinist dream and contributes to the destruction of women and their children whether you realize it or not. Muslims often oppress their women from the outside, but we Westerners bring it on ourselves from just such a point of view.

The Catholic Church alone really understands the role, dignity, and respect to be accorded to women, their fertility, and their children.

NFP isn't easy. Neither is staying married, raising your children properly, or just loving your neighbor. But self-giving love is the only way to happiness and Church teaching and sacraments are God's gifts to get you there.

There is a reason why you who call it misogyny suffer from broken relationships, lack of love, and lack of faith. Come home. The Church is, indeed, much wiser than your personal world-view.

Rebecca,I'm sure Catholic apologists much more intelligent and intellectual than I can answer you logically and coherently. I know your argument is a red herring, but I'm not going to be logical because I rarely know a pro-choice person like you to be swayed by logic. It is almost always invariably an argument from emotion: abortion should be available in the case of rape, incest, and MOST OF ALL, MY personal situation...

I've had a few children, and all I can tell you, emotionally speaking is, we women were not made, naturally, supernaturally or in any other way to kill our children, born or unborn. Abortion is a dehumanizing process to mother and child. We women gain nothing and lose a lot by allowing society to snuff the lives of our babies out. It does not free us, does not make our lives better, and the Church, which actually tries to offer us alternatives, ought to be credited for it instead of attacked by those who who feel defensive and angry.

I thought that the Church did approve of an abortion if the pregnancy endangered the life of the mother and, secondly, I was under the impression that the Church is fine with oral sex as long as it is culminated with, uh, the usual kind of sex.

We really should refuse to construct certain victories for the opponents of life by reason of language. For some time now, anti-Christian "scholars" have been encouraging replacement of the initials "B.C." and "A.D." with "B.C.E. (Before Christian Era) and "C.E." (Christian Era). What a fool I was a few years ago as a Catholic scholar to publish this brand of silliness. Capitulation to this is cooperation with those forces wishing to erase Our Lord's infliuence form the face of the earth piece by piece, yet I (and many other priests and Sisters and lay Catholic scholars cooperated).Now we have been bullied once again into using the term "pro-choice" by the pro-abortionists. We Catholics who are opposed to abortion are the true pro-choicers, as in "choice for life." And the only choice the "pro-choice movement" is interetsed in is the choice for abortion. So let's do get our language straight. We should never, never, never refer to the abortion movement as anything other than "Pro-Abortion." We, of course, are the "Pro-Life Movement."

I think the same sinister forces using the same strategies caused pro-lifers to agree some years ago that it was uncouth and unacceptable to display aborted children in pro-life literature and we capitulated. Now I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong. Pro-abortionists can claim an absolute victory in getting Pro-Lifers to abandon one of their most potent weapons after the Rosary and other forms of prayer. What do you think?

The Church never approves of abortion...abortion is an intrinsically morally evil act. Circumstances, intent, and possible goods do not change this.

People find this difficult to understand for some reason.

Experiment: the Church also teaches that rape is an intrinsically morally evil act. Circumstances, intent, and possible goods do not change this.

For those who can think of any number of relevant circumstances, intents, and good outcomes that magically turn abortion into a Good Thing, tell me what circumstances, intents, and possible goods magically turn rape into a Good Thing.

Rebecca's is a frequently-repeated question that deserves careful answering, first because polite and respectful exchange must govern theological exchange, but also because her comments reveal that she is very far distant from actually understanding what the Church is saying on this point. The Church has never indicated, nor will she ever indicate, that rape is anything other than the unspeakably, inhumane, violent act that it has already been described to be in this string of comments. No tolerance of this awful act or minimization of its degrading inhumanity is hinted at in any way by the Church. What Holy Mother Church is saying is that the murder of a child can never be the way to solve, heal or ameliorate that awful act. Church teaching would similarly maintain that when an unspeakable act of violence or a natural calamity leaves a child (or adult, for that matter) blind, disfigured, crippled, bereft of limbs, etc., that the murder of that child (or adult) can never be the way to solve the incredible difficulties the injured child (or person) and his or her family will face the rest of his/her life.

You know, I think that what Rebecca and some of our other readers fail to include in forming their conclusions is that this earthly life isn't all there is to life. Friends, sometimes life is unjust, painful and miserable. It isn't fair. But we can't make it all fair by allowing more catastrophes to occur in vengeance or in pursuit of somehow "making it right." However, in the course of time all will be all right. We have a Redeemer who took all of humanity's brokenness unto Himself and has healed it. The day will come when all the painfulness of this life will be resolved and healed and those who make it to heaven will enjoy the subsequent peace eternally. Since these discussions are located on a religious website, we must take the religious outcomes seriously as part of the context in which resolution occurs for all of these difficulties.

Fellow posters have supported my points by seeming to disagree with them. Coooool.

Christianity is by nature evangelical, meaning that the first and preoccupying work of the Church is evangelization (c.f. Pope Paul VI, EVANEGLII NUNTIANDI, 1975). It is the primary task of the Christian to claim the world for Christ. Why in the world would we ever want to surrender ground we have already gained for Christ by VOLUNTEERING to forego the designations B.C. and A.D. Absolutely not! The Church of Christ is the true faith, not one good option among many. Non-Christians are helped to see this by needing to adjust to Christian terminology if they are in that part of the world that has already been won for Christ or influenced by it. This week-kneed "Oh, we don't really mean it" baloney has got to come to an end. For those of us who are Christians, we must recognize that our gift of faith is not for each of us alone, but it is a legacy that has been given to the whole world through us. In justice we must influence the world however we can with the gift we have been given.

One writer said: "your characterization of the pro-choice movement as being "pro-abortion" is insulting. The pro-choice movement is about women having the right to decide for themselves whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Imposing a decision on women, either way, is anti-choice."

Sorry, you'll just have to feel insulted then, because any conversation that leaves any door open for the murder of a child is a choice to murder a child. Period.Don't you get it? That's why people of faith are so opposed to the pro-abortion movement. Abortion is the murder of a child.And yes, mothers have been giving their lives for their children all through human history. It is precisely what they are supposed to do if push comes to shove and the life of their child, born or unborn, is imperiled. What sort of mother would not give her life for her child? That's why the pro-life movement is so critical right now. This is the first age in history where instead of being ready to die for their children, women are fighting for the right to murder their own children. This is not a women's issue, it is a societal issue because women are demanding the right to mutilate womanhood and motherhood into a monstrous deformity that has never before been seen in human history.

Dear Arium, I will never stop prosletising, since this is part of the great commission to all christians. When I asked if you have ever experienced the Love of God... I think I already knew what some of the answer would be. Unfortunately many sincere christians (catholics included) do not either understand (despite some form of catachesis * see later on) or indeed allow the Holy spirit to work in them because they continue to maintain control over their lives and do not surrender themselves to Jesus out of love, which is what being a chistian is. Jesus has given us all free will and thus will not impose Himself on anyone, since He wants us to come to him freely. So going to Mass and receiving Our Lord, going to confession, receiving confirmation,or even getting married becomes just another thing that you do in the course of living and just as easy to ditch therefore, unless you live a life surrendered to God...you know the bit about giving up ones own life in order to save it etc.This is why there are some catholics who think it is ok to promote abortion, contraception, euthanasia, divorce, same-sex realtionships. There are also those who like yourself loudly proclaim themselves to be ex-catholics... and like Fr.P I think that you have engaged with a parody of the Church. There were many in the 60's and 70's who were led astray by *inaccurate and sometimes heretical teaching even that given by some religious, (see the com-thread re the visitation of women religious in the USA) which included the above subjects. Often when I read atheistic or personal rants against the church, either the person is (as Fr.P has said) heavily into whatever the Church has prohibited, and want the Church to "compromise" which is relativism: additionaly as in your case they feel they have 'reasoned' their way out of the Church citing 'intelligent thought' etc. I'd just like to say that it is a faith and it cannot be 'reasoned' by human wisdom. I also would ask you to look at the arrogance that implies therefore that you are a) intellectually greater than God Himself, b)intellectually greater than us clealy deluded beings who continue to have a relationship with the Living God. And in wanting the continuance of that life, and have the 'peace that passes all understanding' we want to remain obedient to Him, spend time in real prayer (not just saying/reciting prayers), receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament, be reconciled with Him in Confession, and consecrate our marriage (man and woman) in Him.In the terrible situation that startrd this com-thread, God loves all the parties involved equally BUT it is crystal clear that the Church condemns 1)the actions of the step-father in the rape and abuse of his step-daughter 2) Both he, and his wife, and those who performed the abortion have distanced THEMSELVES from the Church through their actions 3)they need to acknowledge their wrong-doing, confess it (sacramentally). Even leaving out the theistic stuff, they, and everyone else too, needs to also acknowledge that the precurement of the abortion did not 'put right' the effects of the rape but compounded it with a two further sins (the cover-up and the abortion) which damaged this little one still further.In my career as a nurse/midwife I have seen several girls of this age be delivered albeit earlier than full term. It is not without risk but would have been the best way in this case. I have already prayed for all of those involved.I will continue to do so, as I will for you Arium, that you come to a true knowledge of God and Holy Church.